


it's nothing

by bismuth (etorphine)



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Crush, Drunk Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Face Slapping, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon, Rough Sex, they survive au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:55:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etorphine/pseuds/bismuth
Summary: Matt didn’t give a flying fuck about Mello’s health; neither of them were eager for long lives. They survived the case, but then life tore them apart, anyway. They were just waiting to die. At least Matt was. It wasn’t that it bothered him that Mello smoked, just that—“What kind of friend?”
Relationships: Matt | Mail Jeevas & Mello | Mihael Keehl, Matt | Mail Jeevas/Mello | Mihael Keehl
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	it's nothing

Cold outside in the New York City winter. He’d had his hand digging into the inner lining of his coat, his blonde hair catching the light of the neon sign behind him. Bud Light, or Molson, or something. It was red. It made the tiny furs of his expensive-looking mink look like fire-tipped black matches, or angel-hair-thin leeches with orange heads.

Matt wasn’t expecting him to come out. The smoking laws in New York City were a pain in the ass — he couldn’t get a cig anywhere within a ten-foot radius of the door without a waitress giving him the stink-eye through the frosted windows, a stiff little pointer finger gesticulating out onto the street with a tense fervor. Everybody in NYC had a stick up their ass. But when Matt got up and did a pat-down for his pack, Mello followed along, leaving their credit cards and phones behind on the sticky bar table.

“You want a light?” Matt asked, his lime green Bic pinched between two fingers. The wait was making him antsy, and Mello had a Djarum pinched between his lips. Black cloves, with that red little triangle right at the base, as he gracefully patted his back pockets for a flame.

Mello shook his head, presenting a matte black lighter on cue, so thin and sleek it looked like a USB key. He shielded the flame against the winter chill, the glow of the fire warm and angry against the leather of his palm. When the tobacco caught fire, Mello exhaled, just a tad.

The smoke smelled like cherry and spices.

“When’d you start?” Matt asked, conversationally. “Y’know, a few years back, you’d never…”

He trailed off. Mello held the cigarette expertly between two fingers, flicking it with his thumb idly. Leather and cigarette smelled like cooked cowhide on a summer’s ranch, and Matt knew he was always particular about his hair. Something was off.

“Picked up the habit,” Mello replied.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Mello puffed. “I have a friend who smokes.”

“ _Friend_ , huh,” Matt mumbled, shuffling. He jerked his head at the Djarum. “You like those?”

“Yeah.”

“You seemed like you’d like the flavored ones, yeah,” Matt responded, turning his head. “They’re a bit too heavy for me, personally.”

Mello nodded wordlessly, staring ahead at the cars in front of them. The roads were empty — not a lot of cars out in Flushing, Matt supposed. He didn’t know, he wasn’t from around here. It was snowing under the light, buzzing like little tiny fireflies. Mello's left fist was clenched, just barely out of sight; some move he picked up over the past while. Never seen it before today.

Well, granted, it had been two years since they’d last seen each other, since Mexico. Not much had changed physically — maybe Mello got a bit more gaunt, or maybe it was a trick of the light. His hair was longer, almost down to his collarbones, dusting his features to make him look mature, intellectual. And he smoked now. All those years of light, bitchy chastising, and suddenly he had a stick between his lips, puffing like he had any reason to.

Hypocritical, maybe. Matt didn’t give a flying fuck about Mello’s health; neither of them were eager for long lives. They survived the case, but then life tore them apart, anyway. They were just waiting to die. At least Matt was. It wasn’t that it bothered him that Mello smoked, just that—

“What kind of friend?”

“Matt.”

“I’m serious.” Matt licked his lips, tense. “What kind of friend?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then all the more reason you should tell me.”

“Come on, Matt.”

“Come on, Mello.”

Mello sighed, flicking his cigarette of ash. Not even halfway done. Cloves took a bitch of a long time, but it was much like Mello to smoke something exorbitantly slowly, making his fellow smokebreak compatriots wait on his beck and call. “Someone I met online.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Matt mouthed. That kind of friend.

“Yeah,” Mello said, clipped. “So I started smoking.”

Matt shut the hell up after that. Somebody was singing karaoke inside the bar, someone else opened the door and left. Matt’s heart was singing, too, but something slow and painful.

It took fifteen minutes for Mello to finish savoring his goddamned clove — and yeah, Matt waited the whole fucking time until he was done. He was freezing when he got back in the bar. Mello’s nose was pink, but it was hard to see it against red fairy lights.

No, maybe he should have started earlier.

Two years ago. At a bar in Chelsea, and Matt was younger and dumber. Mello’s hair was still bob-length then, and he was angry about something. They were in a booth in the back, and the bartenders were ladies in spandex bathing suits. Matt chose the bar completely on a whim, but it was distracting.

So Mello was angry. “So that’s it, huh,” he was saying.

Back then, Matt had a stint smoking menthols. They were sitting on the table, the blue of the wrapping catching the light. Another beer, with its label ripped up and littered all over the table-top. “That’s it,” Matt replied. “It’s over.”

“You spent two months together. For what?”

Matt shrugged. “For company? Fuck, why else would people spend time together?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mello said, haughtily. He did that thing he always did when he was haughty: dropped his shoulders, rolled his eyes all child-like. “I don’t date.”

“Well, congratulations.” Matt sighed, rolling his eyes at himself. “It doesn’t matter. We broke up, and that’s that.”

Mello looked like a cheetah ready to pounce, both hands flat against the table. For a second, Matt thought he was going to flip the whole thing over. “So now what?”

“Huh?” Matt scrunched up his nose. “What do you mean, what?”

“You cut off all contact with him — then what will you do?”

Matt took a second there. Stared at the table top, watching as a bartender breezed over and collected their empty beer bottles and strutted along the narrow halls of the dive. The TV screen above the bar flipped to a commercial. The shiny wood flipped from green pastures of American football to a glaring white of a dental clinic, and Matt knew he’d thought for too long.

“I dunno,” Matt said, eloquently.

“You miss him?”

“Jesus, Mello. I don’t know. I broke up with him two days ago.”

“The little faggot wasn’t worth your time.”

Matt looked up at him sharply. “Hey.”

“Have another drink.” Mello flagged a girl down. He tended to do that — didn’t have any patience to make eye contact, didn’t like to walk up to the bar. “One more round.” And then he looked back and smiled — well, smiled the way he did when he wasn’t really happy, but had something else up his sleeve. “My treat.”

The night went past in a flurry of beers and shots, shooters and darts. They went home. By home, Matt meant that they went to his place. Mello tagged along again, and maybe Matt should have known better, but he didn’t at the time, for reasons that only God knew.

They were in the bathroom. Matt was staining the porcelain something proper, head against the lip of his bathtub, his hands twisting the shower curtains, running his fingers over the vinyl and polyester. Stimming. Mello got him to wash his mouth out, take off his goggles and then pushed him into bed. Maybe that was about the time that he would have realized — but it didn’t set in until he sunk down into the mattress, half-dead.

Then he felt Mello’s lips on his, his weight on his. He sobered up pretty quick then.

At that point, they’d called it quits a while ago. The last relapse had been a few months’ past. Mello hated Jake with an intensity that hadn’t existed with Andrea, and Matt never knew why — didn’t care to — and still didn’t care when Mello held his face in his gloved hands, pushing their noses together, their tongues tangling with the stale taste of vomit and beer.

Matt’s hands were on Mello’s ass. Take the man out of the gutter, but not the gutter out of the man.

It wasn’t a long enough break for it to feel like a reprieve. Just a small error in judgment, forgotten in the mornings to come. Mello liked to teach a lesson, always did. He was particularly rough when he wanted Matt to get a point, but Matt didn’t mind.

So he let Mello take a piece of his neck and grind it between his teeth like a rabid dog biting into raw meat. His stubby fingernails were clawing down his shoulders as he fisted his striped shirt. Matt liked it, he liked it when Mello treated him awful — call it a masochistic streak, because Matt sure as hell wouldn’t — but where Mello usually stopped, Mello kept going.

He had him with a ball of hair in his fist, throwing him around in his bed. Matt was hard, and his neck was already full of angry red splotches. He had work in two days, it was a Friday night, fuck, but he was too drunk to care. Mello was in his ear, biting the fuck out of his earlobes, and the cocktail of beers and whiskey made Matt loud and stupid.

Just how Mello liked him best.

“You like that, don’t you,” Mello hissed, hot in his ear. “You fucking like that, you slut.”

Matt groaned, breathless. Worthless. He was weak and useless at Mello’s hand when he shoved him around like that.

Stress relief. Nobody ever did that to him.

“Fuck you,” Mello spat, retreating, sitting up against his groin. Hand on his neck, now, pressing into the hickeys that were blooming on the surface.

He pushed hard. Just a second or two without breath, without bloodflow. Matt didn’t like it, but the feeling went away quick enough. He gasped when Mello let go, his chest expanding, eyes blinking back awake, sober.

“Fuck you,” Mello said again, and then he straightened. The bed creaked underneath them. There was a few seconds of nothing, and when Matt looked up, he felt a blinding pain against his cheek, snapping his head towards the bedspread.

Heat coursed down his chest.

“Fuck,” Matt groaned. His cheek tingled in retribution.

“Fuck you,” Mello repeated, like a broken record.

He grabbed Matt by the collar and dragged him back upright. His hand collided, leather-to-flesh as he slapped him the other way, both cheeks stinging now against the friction of his glove. Warm and electric.

Matt’s heart was stuttering. He could feel Mello’s cock pressing against his past two layers of jeans, and it made him warmer, warmer yet.

“You piece of shit," Mello spat, grabbing his collar hard. Matt almost thought he'd rip it. "Fuck you.”

Matt looked up, cheeks aflame, and swallowed his response.

Mello was staring at him, his hair falling over the two of them like stocks of grain. His gloves on, his distressed shirt on, his tight leather jeans still hugging his thighs and the bulge between his legs. A hand returned to Matt's cheek, slackening against his face to cradle his jaw.

The action was so tender that Matt felt a chill run down his spine.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Mello asked, quietly, harshly. Like the words weren't connecting to his touch. “You fucking slut.”

Matt opened his mouth to say something, but Mello slapped the words out of his lips. The surface hadn’t connected perfectly, and it felt like a punch.

Matt twisted, face into the pillow. Mello was getting sloppy, which meant he was getting emotional. Matt didn’t like it when he got too emotional.

“Fuck you,” Mello said, and then pulled him up again, pushing him against the wall. Matt's head went _thump_ as Mello knocked their lips together, soft flesh on soft flesh. Mello's hot breaths came in puffs on Matt's lips as he grabbed his hair and pulled him closer, hurdling their tongues into each other’s teeth like skee balls.

“Fuck you,” he felt Mello whisper. He felt Mello take his bottom lip and bite down, suck hard. His teeth went in like he wanted to gnaw it right off. Both of them felt Matt twitch in his pants as Mello licked the inside of his mouth from side to side, face-fucking him with a tongue and some vengeance.

Matt let him vaccuum the shit out of his gums before Mello broke away, sinking his teeth into the hem of the glove and ripping the button open. _Pop!_ He spat it out against the window sill where it tumbled between the crack, and then his naked hand sailed down between them, warm on Matt's bulge.

Matt twitched as he unzipped his pants deftly and pushed his fingers into the hole of his boxers. It took three seconds, max.

"Shit," Matt breathed, as Mello pulled his dick out and grabbed tight.

Mello pumped like he was churning butter. And Matt couldn't help the way he started panting within seconds, because he hadn’t been touched like that since the last time Mello touched him like that — nobody milked him like they were trying to empty him. Mello’s passion was always crackling, hot in his palm. Made Matt feel like a fucking Capri Sun.

“You want me,” Mello whispered, pushing their foreheads together, jerking Matt off from between his legs. “You want me so fucking bad,” he muttered, punctured with a mean-spirited laugh.

Matt managed a “So?” between his breathless groans.

“You can’t have me,” Mello said. And then he spat on his hand roughly with a thick glob of saliva, continued. “You can’t fucking have me.”

Matt drew in a sharp breath as Mello rubbed a finger against the tip, smearing precum all over his head. He brought it to his mouth to lick it off, and then returned to his rightful place, pulling his foreskin down roughly.

“Who do you belong to?”

They did this all the fucking time, back when they were still together. Mello made him say it. Wouldn’t let him go until he said it. But Matt knew a bad idea, even pissed out of his mind, and so he said nothing.

“Come on, you slut,” Mello growled, leaning in and raking his teeth against the corner of Matt's jaw. He dipped lower, licking his neck again, and then bit a piece of bruised flesh and sucked. “Who do you belong to?” he asked, breathless.

Matt shook his head.

Mello drew back, pushing himself off of Matt's body, and reeled in for a slap. The skin on skin stung this time — the sharp sound rung out in the room, and Matt felt himself twitch again, against Mello's fingers.

“Tell me who you belong to, boy,” Mello commanded.

“Fuck,” Matt murmured. Mello’s touch felt like boiling water against his dick, hard enough to hurt now, pumping hard. “Fuck.”

“Tell me.”

Matt didn’t say anything, only panted.

“Say it.”

Still.

“Say it, boy.”

Nothing. Nothing at all.

“Tell me,” Mello said, taking his hand away suddenly, leaving his dick out in the open cold. Torture.

“Fuck you, man,” Matt whispered, his heart skyrocketing. “Don’t make me fucking do this.”

Mello stepped back slowly with a small waggle of his head as he got off the bed, slid open a drawer at the foot. Matt watched as he took the lube from the place Matt had always kept it, slathered his fingers in it, and stared him down.

“Fine,” Mello said, kneeling on the bed. Drawing closer.

Matt took another breath. Now it was coming. It was coming, like it or not.

Mello grabbed Matt by the shoulder and flipped him over, face-down on the bedspread. He heard his other glove buttons unbuckle. _Click!_ And then his hand, digging into Matt's hair, pressing his face down into the unwashed pillow.

Matt couldn't breathe. And then he could, because Mello readjusted, pushing him down cheek-first.

That was him being nice.

His other hand went to town, grabbing Matt's belt buckles, pulling his jeans over his ass little by little. Tight squeeze, but his ass was out eventually, and he heard Mello make a small satisfied noise as he grazed a goopy, cool finger against Matt's asshole.

Matt tensed, wincing. Mello's hand over his head readjusted, his palm sweat soaking his cheek.

Then Mello's one finger dug in, poking through. It was then that Matt realized how fucked he really was going to get.

“Fuck,” Mello swore. “Jesus fucking Christ.” Matt bit his lip, keeping his eyes shut, as Mello laughed cruelly. “What a fucking waste.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Matt whispered against the bedspread.

“So what,” Mello replied, pushing him up against the bedpost as he pushed in and out. “You never let him fuck you?”

“Shut up.”

Mello got on his knees behind him, rustling the bedsheets, and pushed another finger deep inside. Hand on his head, fingers hooked a little to the left, and down. Matt hated how quickly he got it, tensing up, his toes curling. The bastard knew him like homeroom.

“Found you,” Mello said, chuckling. “Faggot couldn’t even take fucking you, huh.”

Over and over again he kept hitting it, shooting laser beams down his legs and shins, down his back and into his tailbone. Matt couldn’t form words anymore. Just kept writhing, his face against the pillow, until both of Mello's hands went away.

Matt didn’t turn around. He was in deep shit, and he knew it. He heard the cap popping off over the lube, the sound of Mello’s fly unzipping, the sound of Mello touching himself. He wanted to look, but fuck, he wouldn’t.

The less he looked, the quicker he got it over with. Mello had a score to settle tonight, and Matt was going to lose.

It was his saving grace that Mello didn’t say anything in the interim, and now, Mello was pressed up against the back of his thighs, warm and wet, like an armadillo poking around an anthill, trying to intimidate its company.

Matt was panting when Mello pulled him up on all fours. He grabbed his thighs and spread his legs roughly, one hand stilling Matt's hip for leverage. His other — leading his cock into the passage between his asscheeks, the lube cool against Matt's hole.

Then Mello eased in, stretching him without another warning. Filling him the fuck up and tearing him open from the inside out.

“Fuck,” Matt groaned again, loud and long, clutching the sheets in his fists.

Mello moved. In and out, up and down, around and around, he moved like it was his vocation to be inside of him, groaning like a believer, too. His hand returned to Matt's back, pushing the fabric of his shirt up until it met hair.

He grabbed his hand into a fist, scratching his nails against the back of Matt's scalp like he was tearing the strands out one by one.

Matt's groans grew when Mello hit him where it hurt, once, twice, thrice. Mello matched him with his noises, his naked hands reaching around Matt's hips to milk his dick for all it was worth. “Fuck, you feel good,” Mello breathed.

Matt was feeling good, alright.

Mello pulled him back, grabbing him by the hair to force upwards, arching his spine. Then he went harder, pounding him, drilling into the deepest part of his psyche as his hips slapped against the fleshy bits of Matt's ass.

The world was turning purple. Matt couldn’t think, and his throat was starting to go dry.

“Fuck you,” Mello said suddenly, pushing his head aside as if punishing him, throwing him back onto the pillows. “Fuck you, Matt. Who do you belong to?”

“No,” Matt croaked lamely, shaking his head.

“You’re mine,” Mello hissed. Dug both hands into his hipbones and pushed him down into the mattress as he pounded hard, _slap slap slap slap slap_. “You’re mine. You’re all fucking mine. You belong to me and nobody but me.”

Matt grabbed the sheets tightly, lifting his hips in the air like a nickel store whore. He felt Mello deep inside of him, rocking the bed, rocking the mattress, the pleasure paralyzing the lower half of his body until Matt was sure he'd never walk again. And he kept going, on and on, no stopping, breathless and evil.

"Fuck, fuck," Matt groaned.

"Fuck you," Mello replied.

Mello's hand kept pumping, pumping him for all he was worth. Which wasn’t much. Because then Mello asked again, just when Matt was on the brink of cumming: “Who do you belong to?”

And Matt fucking said it, too. “You.”

That was the last time. It hurt to remember it. Two years later, Mello had his elegantly gloved hands against his rocks glass. Whiskey sour. He never drank those. He had his Djarum Blacks on the table now on display, and the box matched him perfectly, sleek and dark and dangerous.

“So your friend?” Matt asked, lips popping off the suction of a beer bottle. “Who is he?”

Mello looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read. His hair never looked so elegant when it was cropped shorter. Matt remembered seeing it when it was this length, back when they were kids — Mello would tie it up in a half-ponytail, but it looked different now. It caught the warmth of the light, the flickering of the candle. Underneath that furry jacket he’d worn a sleek black turtleneck. Rich and comfortable.

“William,” he said simply.

“William.”

“Yeah.”

Matt inhaled and smiled. “Good for you.”

“Thanks,” Mello said, coolly. Not a single readable emotion on his face, his eyes empty of promise or betrayal.

“How long has it been?”

“A year and some.”

Matt whistled. “Wow,” he mumbled, taking another swig of the beer. Trying to let it calm his heart, because fuck. “Congratulations.”

Mello crossed his legs, sitting back. “It’s nothing.”

Matt looked down and shrugged. The world was playing a cruel joke on him. Mello’s box of Djarums were so pristine and perfectly cubic in comparison to Matt’s roughed-up, ripped-up box of Kings.

He wondered what kind of cigarettes William smoked. What kind of man he was.

What kind of piece of shit would be able to keep Mello for a year and a half when Matt, even at their greatest, only had him for a measly four months.

“And you?” Mello asked, dragging Matt out of his blustered reverie. “You have anyone?”

Matt looked up. Mello was beautiful. Beautiful when he couldn’t have him. He never thought it before, and now the realization hurt when it danced before him.

Couldn’t believe that he’d once gotten so close.

“Nah,” Matt said, putting the beer bottle flat back on the table. “Just… waiting, I guess. For the right one.”

“Well, I hope you find them.”

Matt nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”


End file.
